Femininity Within Freud's Idea of The Oedipus Complex

The article, Femininity, was written by Sigmund Freud and was published in 1933. In this article, Freud mentions his ideas about women's sexual based problems, women wish to have a penis and them feeling deficient to not having a penis, the relation of those problems with Oedipus complex and consequences of these. In addition to that, Freud states to the ideas and theses of him about the sexual differences consisting of men and women starting from the time they were born to the time they die.

According to Freud, the desire of having a penis for women starts when they are young and just started exploring what they have and what boys have. From that time, girls think that them not having something that boys have, penis, is a deficiency. Later on, girls discover that there are others who are like her and her mother is one of them. That leads girls thinking that their mother is also deficient. That concludes in girls becoming distant with their mother and feeling closer to their father. And in conclusion, this leads girls to have Oedipus complex.

There are some Freud's viewpoints that clearly descrive his position towads femininity:

‘'We are accustomed to employ ‘masculine' and ‘feminine' as mental qualities as well, and have in the same way transferred the notion of bisexuality to mental life‘' - there is a hasty generalization fallacy in this sentence because the sentence generalizes the ideas as everyone thinks that way.

‘'You cannot give the concepts of ‘masculine' and ‘feminine' any new connotation‘' - there is a hasty generalization fallacy in this sentence because there is an absolute judgment about giving new connotation to concepts of the definitions masculine and feminine.

‘'The turning away from the mother is accompanied by hostility; the attachment to the mother ends in hate' - this sentence contains a slippery slope fallacy because the second sentence is the consequence of the first sentence and it leads to a bad point.

‘'You may take it as an instance of male injustice if I assert that envy and jealousy play an even greater part in the mental life of the women than of men‘' - the cause of this sentence having an ad hominem fallacy is that it saying ‘…envy and jealousy play an even greater part in the mental life of the women than men. ‘.

‘'For a girl too, her first object must be her mother (and the figures of wet-nurses and foster-mothers that merge into her)' - there is an appeal to tradition fallacy because in this sentence it states that it is a must for the girl to have her mother as her first object.

To summarise, Freud explained his ideas about the sexual based problems of women and its comparison to men in this article. He also mentioned about the problem that he thinks that has a big effect on women's life which is women envying penis. In my opinion, there are points that Freud is right but I do not think that the ideas he pointed out are that exaggerated such as Oedipus complex. But throughout this article, I mostly did not agree with the ideas he stated.